#9 Your ideas are not original

#9 Your ideas are not original

Your ideas are not original! In this weeks episode we talk about Led Zeppelin’s reputation for copying ideas, Star Wars and the many influences of George Lucas, Apple being inspire by Xerox, Patent Trolls, Vimeo vs Youtube, how GPS came to be, The Guttenberg Press, Everything is a remix and how Thomas Edison’s patent trolling might be the reason we have Hollywood!

Edisons strict enforcement of patents didn’t help the movie industry grow it stagnated it, it was only when studios moved to California that they could grow and experiment with the art form

[T]he MPPC also established a monopoly on all aspects of filmmaking. Eastman Kodak, which owned the patent on raw film stock, was a member of the Trust and thus agreed to only sell stock to other members. Likewise, the Trust’s control of patents on motion picture cameras ensured that only MPPC studios were able to film, and the projector patents allowed the Trust to make licensing agreements with distributors and theaters – and thus determine who screened their films and where.

In short, if you wanted to be in the movie business, you did so at the pleasure of Thomas Edison. And Edison (via the MPPC) was not one to back down. The Company took to the courts to prevent the unauthorized use of everything from cameras to projectors — and in many cases, the films themselves. According to Steven Bach in his book, Final Cut, the MPPC even went to the extreme “solution” of hiring mob-affiliated thugs to enforce the patents extra-judiciously. Pay up — or else.

“I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.”
― Henry Ford

“In 2013, Personal Audio filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Lotzi Digital, Inc., producers of The Adam Carolla Show and several other podcasts on the Carolla Digital Network. The suit alleged that owner Adam Carolla and his network of content infringed on Personal Audio’s patent 8,112,504.[6]

Using the crowdfunding site FundAnything.com, listeners have contributed more than $475,000 (as of August 2014) to support Carolla throughout the legal proceedings.[7]

Personal Audio dropped the lawsuit July 29, 2014, stating that the defendants were not “making significant money from infringing Personal Audio’s patents”. However, Carolla countersued, having already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars mounting a defense against claims he deemed unfounded. Among claims sought by the countersuit is a request that the initial patent be invalidated.[8] On August 15, 2014, Carolla and Personal Audio filed a joint motion to dismiss after reaching a settlement, the details of which are confidential, but include a six-week “quiet period” during which neither party could speak to the media.[9] both parties’ claims were dropped without prejudice, and as such can be re-filed at a later date